Dorthy is a ‘savage’ retelling of The Wizard of Oz – though, if I was doing a retelling, you wouldn’t expect anything else, would you? Dorothy finds herself in a strange land full of zombies, werewolves and a serial killing metal man who’s trying to rebuild himself from the body parts of his victims!

Oh, and a ghost dog.

The comments for Dorthy have been amazing so far. I’ve been told it’s readers’ favourite story of mine. I’ve been told it’s beautiful. Nasty. So many more.

And, did I make the 50k?

Yes. Yes I did! And the story is still going strong!

You can find Dorthy here on Wattpad if you’d like to go somewhere over the rainbow!

The #SnowAnthology is only available at $0.99 (or equivalent applicable cost in your locality) for a limited time, so pre-order your copy before it’s too late!

This book will only be available for this price for a little while, so grab it while you can. I’m excited to be included – my story, Wings, is one of the stories in there. And of course, I’m still working away at stories on Wattpad, and there’s more coming later in the year, so if you do grab it, let me know.

With an online audience of over ONE MILLION combined followers and hundreds of millions of reads on their stories, the SNOW anthology showcases talented Wattpad authors from around the globe.

Journey into the woods where you will discover a cabin surrounded by snow, filled with secrets…

The SNOW anthology features sixteen original novellas and novelettes in multiple genres, including Young Adult, New Adult, Contemporary Romance, Historical Romance, Urban Fantasy, Supernatural and Paranormal.

Brought to you by USA TODAY BESTSELLING AUTHOR Kelly Anne Blount and available for a LIMITED TIME ONLY! Don’t wait for the snow to melt before you uncover these stories of love, loss, and self-discovery.

Check out the incredible list of authors participating below and click on the links to connect with them on Wattpad!

About a month ago, as you’ll see from my previous post (sorry about the wait for a follow-up), I was asked to write a story.

This story was written in conjunction with NBC Universal and Wattpad to help promote their new film The Purge: Anarchy. To say I was honoured to be asked is an understatement. I was blown away and was worried I’d do them justice.

It appears my fears were unjustified. It appears my story wasn’t too bad at all. The comments I’ve had for Mr. Composurehave been so amazing, I’m staggered by the amount of love given to this story. So many people have said how much they’ve enjoyed my writing, with many begging for the update.

Unfortunately, of course, the updates are governed by the executives at NBC Universal and Wattpad. They have said the updates will be weekly, leading up to the release of the film.

There’s been three updates so far. The first part went live on the 24th June. Part two followed on the 3rd July. Part three was uploaded last Tuesday, the 8th July.

Part four, the grand finale, goes live tomorrow.

I mentioned in my last post that writing this story was out of my comfort zone. I normally write either paranormal thrillers or children’s stories. I’ve dabbled in science fiction and erotica too, but, normally, it’s the paranormal thrillers than win out. So, to have such a huge positive response to Mr. Composure, is quite humbling really. At the time of writing, I’m coming up to 80,000 reads, which is phenomenal, really.

And tomorrow, the last part is uploaded. I have to admit to being a little anxious. I’ve deliberately been somewhat vague about the main character but I knew exactly who he’d be when I started. I had the final two sentences written pretty much as soon as I’d written the opening! I think people are going to be surprised – and shocked – by two things in particular.

In fact, I hope they are. That was my intention.

The story will be, I’m told, used to help promote the film over the next year. I have no idea what form that promotion will take, but I’m looking forward to finding out.

Either way, I sincerely thank everyone who has dropped by the story or my page for their support. It honestly does mean SO much.

And, this comment by a reader made me feel I must be doing something correct with my writing. This is what really makes my day.

“I just found a new role model in writing. YOU! Thank you for sharing your works!!! I just stumbled across your account and read one of your excerpts. Fantastic. Amazing. No words to describe my emotional disbelief that an individual can write so well. Keep it up, and never, ever, stop improving because my goodness, I don’t even know if you CAN improve. I don’t mean this in a bad way. I mean this in the way that you are literally the best, and your works are the best that I have ever come across. So well written!”

My latest book is Dark Places, a collection of thirteen short stories and thirteen poems, all with a dark theme. I’m not sure why I like to write this type of story, to be honest. I’m generally an upbeat, happy sort of person – too laid back to let things get to me. I’m always making jokes and having a laugh. Perhaps it’s because I write such things? The darkness is vented in my work so there’s only light left?

The poems contained therein were, actually, written during a time where I wasn’t so positive. Things weren’t going well in my life and various things prompted various poems. The memory of how I was treated by my natural father. Loves lost. I’m sure everyone has these twilight periods to battle through. I didn’t exactly find solace in the words, but I couldn’t seem to write anything else at the time. The stories are different. I can be at my happiest (as I am now) and still produce a piece with shadows and death. I find poetry to be much more personal and so it reflects how I feel at that moment. With a story, I follow the path of the characters, and they have their own moods unencumbered by my own.

As I’m meant to be working on the sequel to Sin, my Muse thinks it mighty hilarious to put all sorts of other ideas into my head and I need to give them form to clear the mist for Sin to continue with his adventure. Hence, I wrote I Am Death. Like a lot of my work, it grew from just the first sentence. I don’t necessarily have any idea what the story will be as I’m writing. It turns out however it turns out. This happened with Sin and with the majority of his blog posts (he has his own diary at http://singularityspoint.blogspot.com).

I Am Death began with, simply, ‘I think…’ and the result was a tale of Death contemplating life as he prepares to take his next soul. My wife saw a writing competition in one of her magazines and said I should enter. The Last Dance was written for this. It didn’t win, but, when my wife read it, it brought a tear to her eye. A friend of mine told me that, when she was 9, her cousin said the sink overflow was where the dragons went in. I used her exact words for the beginning of ‘There Be Dragons’ without any idea of how it would go.

So, it can take very little to inspire me. I go with the flow, caught up by the current of something I’m not entirely in control of.

The idea of the collection came from a fellow writer. She asked me to look at something she’d written ‘while in a dark place’. I suddenly HAD to write using that title, and the collection came together soon after, with the addition of stories that I couldn’t stop writing. I had the bit between my teeth and was being led along at a real pace. The themes of darkness becoming real, of reality and surreality being intertwined, of the helplessness of being pushed to events you can’t control, were almost a whirlwind of words that were finding an outlet through my fingers.

If you know what I mean…

A friend at work created an original watercolour inspired by the stories, and this is featured in the book. It’s between the contents and the first poem and acts as a doorway to the darkness within.

I had started to write a prequel to Sin, intending it to be nothing but a short. I wanted to include it in Dark Places but was asked ‘what about Joy?’ I was halfway through what was to become Prelude, then, and stopped. They were right. What about Joy? Joy is Sin’s sister, and appears in the book as a ghost – either to help or hinder him. She disappears just when he seems to need her most and is unable to give him real information, so has to resort to guidance that frustrates and angers her brother. Suffering a mirror image of Sin’s ‘talent’, Joy has committed suicide. But what of her origins? I wrote Joy to give her that voice, that chance to tell it from her side.

Fittingly, I think, Joy became the final piece in the collection, a place she deserves.

The reaction to Dark Places has been wonderful, with comments such as: “The descriptive passages create fabulous imagery,” and “The author’s portrayal of death could lead you to believe he’d actually experienced it.” I’m hoping it has the same success that Sin has enjoyed but, either way, I sincerely enjoyed creating it.

About Me

I’ve been writing since I was knee-high to a giraffe. I don’t think I could quite hold a pen when I was nose to knee with a grasshopper, but I was pretty young when I started. It’s been my life-long dream to complete a novel. I had so many ideas and stories that needed to be told, I didn’t really have a choice, and 2011 is the year my first full length novel was finished.
Over the years, I’ve written many stories and poems, and won competitions with a few. I’ve been published in a multitude of magazines and have appeared on Sky TV debating the pros and cons of web based publishing as opposed to the more traditional kind, thanks to an online magazine I used to run – me, who produced an ezine from my home up against one of the main agents for a major literary house. Scary stuff! The magazine drew in submissions from all over the world and gave a showcase to those that either didn’t want to find magazines and other publishers or actually couldn’t. If I liked it, I published it, it was that simple.